hoof-in-mouth

I used to work for a small software company in San Francisco. My desk was in Engineering -- basically a small room with ten or so desks at right angles to each other, and absolutely no privacy.

One day Dave, a practical joker in our IT department, came running into the room shouting something about winning the lottery. We all knew that he had a punchline ready and was just waiting for one of us to give some sort of benign response so he could blurt it out. So, I obliged. "HOLY COW!" I said in mock surprise. It was only then that I realized I was only one of two people in engineering not originally from India.

Fortunately, after a few seconds of very uncomfortable silence, everyone laughed. Unfortunately, we never got to hear Dave's punchline.